T-Mobile's John Legere Launches F-Bomb At EFF For 'Binge On' Criticism

T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere has been at his fiery best this week launching an F-bomb at the EFF on Twitter as the company faced growing criticism from Net Neutrality defenders over its recently added ‘Binge On’ feature.

The ‘Binge On’ feature allows T-Mobile customers to watch an unlimited amount of video content from participating providers without being charged for the data. In order to offer such a bang-up deal to subscribers, T-Mobile claims it “optimizes” those video streams to a bitrate that’ll “stretch mobile data consumption.” The free streaming video, however, comes at a price. That being video quality. For users who subscribe to the free Binge On feature, they will find their video stream relegated to what Legere refers to as “DVD quality” streams. Or in other words, 480p. While this is certainly not a terrible deal, particularly as the small screen sizes of most mobile devices don’t make the non-HD stream unenjoyable to watch, the problems YouTube, the EFF and others are concerned with is the fact that customers who enroll in the Binge On program aren’t just having the participating video provider’s streams “optimized,” T-Mobile is also throttling streams from non-Binge On participants too. So when customers go to stream YouTube, for instance (a company that refused to be added to T-Mobile’s Binge On providers), even though they are being charged data to stream YouTube, they aren’t allowed to stream it in HD.

It is this across the board throttling that lead the EFF to write an article claiming that T-Mobile’s Binge On feature “violates the principles of net neutrality.”

But despite the fact that it seems pretty clear T-Mobile is technically throttling, not optimizing, video streams, Legere still adamantly defended the feature, posting one of his classic Legere video rants on the official T-Mobile blog.

In it, he declared once again that Binge On isn’t throttling anyone because customers can choose whether or not to take advantage of Binge On, and that the benefits of having offering Binge On to customers definitely outweigh the negatives.

“ There are people out there saying we’re ‘throttling.’ They’re playing semantics!” Legere wrote in his post. “Binge On does NOT permanently slow down data nor remove customer control … mobile customers don’t always want or need giant heavy data files. So we created adaptive video technology to optimize for mobile screens and stream at a bitrate designed to stretch your data (pssst, Google, that's a GOOD thing). You get the same quality of video as watching a DVD – 480p or higher – but use only 1/3 as much data … Watch more video, use less data from your service plan. That's an important and valuable benefit!”

The main thing that will probably keep Binge On from being dinged is the fact that that it is an optional feature, which customers can choose to turn on and off. Legere understands the implications of offering “choices” and even eluded to it in his rant.

“Most importantly…YOU, the customer, are always in complete control of your experience. If you decide you WANT the full resolution video, great! Just flip the switch in your account. It’s totally up to you to decide. You can do this as often as you want and it stays set the way you set it … why are special interest groups -- and even Google! -- offended by this? Why are they trying to characterize this as a bad thing?”

But apparently Legere’s answer wasn’t what the EFF was looking for. A few hours after posting his video blog, Legere launched a Twitter Q&A session where customers could personally ask him any clarifying questions concerning Binge On. The EFF jumped in with its own question about video throttling to which Legere answered with a classic 4 letter expletive.

“So what Binge On does is it includes a proprietary technology that not only detects the video stream but also selects the appropriate bitrate to optimize to the mobile device. That’s part A of my answer. Part B is, who the fuck are you anyway, EFF? Why are you stirring up so much trouble, and who is paying you?”

The response brought many supporters of the EFF to the forefront, defending the organization, after which, Legere clarified his statement to make it more PC.

What the consensus will be on whether or not Binge On violates Net Neutrality is yet to be determined, but for now the company will continue to offer the service as is. According to Legere, customer video consumption is 12 percent higher since launching Binge on so clearly some customers are seeing it as beneficial.